


Khan Abram and the Kingdom of Heaven

by Mal-3 (The_Fenspace_Collective)



Series: Candle In The Dark: A Peculiar Saga of the Sea of Time [2]
Category: BattleTech: MechWarrior, Fenspace
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Kerensky's Clans, Prophecy, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 07:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fenspace_Collective/pseuds/Mal-3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Part 1 of the Quest of the Nova Cats:</i> Much like canaries, when the Universe changes the psychics are the first to know about it. Clan Nova Cat stands alone among their Clan brethren, guided by the visions of their Oathmasters. Now the Nova Cats stand at the precipice of destiny, on top of a hill strewn with kites...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Khan Abram and the Kingdom of Heaven

>   
> _“There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven’t noticed already.”_ ~ Robert Anton Wilson  & Robert Shea, The Illuminatus! Trilogy(1975)

**Clan Nova Cat Compound, Strana Mechty**   
**8 November 3009**

Abram knew this was no ordinary dream the moment his head hit the pillow. He had always been a better warrior than a visionary, but his limited experience with the Rite of the Vision was more than enough to tell him this was a true dream.

He found himself standing at the foot of a green hill in summertime, not unlike a hill his sibko had been fond of long ago in his youth. The grass was too green and the slope too smooth to be any hill from his memory, though. He took a step forward and heard the whisper of grass compressing under his foot in crystal clarity reinforcing the fact this wasn’t simply a hazy recollection.

Abram looked up and all doubt vanished. The air was pitch black and filling the sky from horizon to horizon was a great spiral galaxy, lighting the hill in a hundred billion points of glory. He stared, transfixed at the sight. Laughter came from the hill’s summit, breaking his reverie. The slopes were easy enough to climb and he came to the top in short order.

There he found a gathering of children, some dressed in the colors of the Scavenger Lords, others in the colors of the Periphery nations and a group wearing the symbols of the Clans. Each child held a string, and attached to each string was a kite. Abram looked up again and saw the sky filled with kites flitting darkly against the galaxy’s backdrop. The kites were shaped like dropships, jumpships and other shapes, things he dimly recognized from children’s stories and stranger shapes still. Abram’s hand jerked, and he looked down to realize that he too had a string tied to his wrist. Tracing the line into the sky he saw that his kite was shaped like the Clan’s flagship.

In the middle of the throng of children a lone adult – a woman barely out of her childhood herself – did her best to maintain order. She walked over to Abram and smiled. Abram felt an odd longing as he looked up (Up? Abram suddenly realized with detachment that he’d become just as a much a child as the others) into the woman’s light brown eyes. A trueborn Clan warrior had no parental attachments and yet there was something there in the woman’s eyes…

“Do you want to fly?” she asked. Abram nodded fiercely.

“I do,” he replied. The woman tilted her head.

“If you want to fly,” she said, “you need to let go.” Abram opened his hand, but the string stayed stubbornly attached to his wrist.

“I can’t,” he complained.

The woman laughed. “No, silly. You have to let go of the earth. See?” She pointed at a laughing child wearing Wolf’s totem, slowly drifting upward on a kite shaped like a silver shield. “If you let go of the earth, you can live free in the sky. Or you can stay on the ground and just play in the sky. There’s scary things in the sky sometimes.”

“I want to live in the sky. I’m not afraid!” Abram exclaimed, and the woman’s smile dimmed a little, becoming more solemn.

“I thought you might not be,” she said. “I need a knight to help watch the others in the sky when I’m not there.”

“A knight?” Abram tilted his head.

“Yes, you know, play nice, be just and honorable, keep the scary things from hurting anyone. A knight.” Time seemed to slow down, the laughter faded and all of a sudden it was just Abram and the woman alone on the hill, the galaxy spinning above them. “Would you like to be my knight?”

Abram could feel the weight of destiny pushing down on his back. Indifferent vision-seeker he might’ve been, he could still recognize a moment of truth when he was in the middle of it. He said nothing at first, trying to get his dream-addled mind to work properly, to analyze and understand the vision and the choice he was making. The pressure refused to let up, and he realized that trying to understand a dream from within it was foolhardy. Instead, he let his instincts go and made the decision.

“I will be your knight,” Abram said. Time sped back up and the woman smiled even more brightly than before.

“That’s great!” she said. “Now you need to learn to fly. When the time comes, I’ll be there. Until then you need to learn. Take my hand.”

He took her hand and together they rose into the sky, the kite dragging them towards the galaxy, the spiral growing brighter and brighter until the radiance washed out everything around them—

~***~

Khan Abram Radick jolted awake, the vision ringing in his head. He had the sense that he’d just committed himself to something, some great purpose, but what?

The dream-woman asked him if he wanted to be her knight. That was the Clan dream, wasn’t it? To be the stalwart defenders of the Inner Sphere against the predations of the Scavenger Lords? Any Clansman who knew their history would say yes, but there were many strange things about the vision. The Khan was no expert in the Ways of Seeing.

He needed an expert.

Quicky dressing, Radick left his chambers in search of Maria Bavros, Clan Oathmaster and the one person in Strana Mechty capable of grasping the greater meaning of his dream. Arriving at her chambers, he pressed the annunciator.

“Enter, my Khan,” Bavros said quietly. “You have had a vision, quiaff?” Radick wasn’t entirely surprised by this; one didn’t get to be Oathmaster of the Nova Cats without being a little spooky, and Maria was no exception. And it was always wise to have some bit of religious fear in a person when visiting an oracle. Still, he maintained his Clan composure as he strode into the candlelit room.

“Aff,” he replied. “And now I seek wisdom as to its meaning.”

“Tell me, my Khan.” Bavros’s tone was light, and she never looked up from her cup of tea when she said, “When the girl-child asked you if you wanted to be her knight, what did you say?”

Radick stared thunderstruck at his Oathmaster. “How, how did you know that?” he stammered, composure gone in an instant.

“You did not answer my question.”

“Answer mine, Oathmaster. How did you know that?” Bavros said nothing, but looked up and smiled just a little and Radick put it together. “You had the same dream,” he said wonderingly.

“I did,” she said. “The hill, the children, the kites, the galaxy shining down on us all. And the question. You have not answered mine yet, did you answer hers?”

“I said yes,” Radick said automatically.

“As did I.”

“But what does it mean?”

“The winds atop the hill are the winds of change, and if the Nova Cats are to survive then we had best do as the girl said and learn to fly. What _that_ means, I do not know, though consider: all the kites were shaped like spacecraft, quiaff? Perhaps it means more of a focus on space travel.”

“Aff, perhaps we need to emulate the Sea Foxes more than our sib.” The Khan looked pensive as a thought struck him. “What of the question? It speaks to something deep within the Clan soul, quiaff? The Star League Defense Force were the shining knights of the Inner Sphere…” he trailed off, looking even more pensive. “And when the Great Father brought us here, we stopped being those knights.”

Bavros’s eyes widened. “That is a dangerous line of thought, my Khan,” she warned. “Too much thinking along those lines and we risk everything.”

“I am no child fresh from the tank, Maria,” Radick said, annoyed. “I know when and where to speak. And yet… if the SLDF – our ancestors – were knights, then threw it away on the Exodus, where does that leave us now? Why have we been given a chance to reaffirm an abandoned oath?”

Bavros thought about it a little. “The oath was to protect the others from dangers in the sky. Perhaps we will resume our former oaths and responsibilities?”

“Could we? The Star League is dead.”

“There are always possibilities, my Khan. Never forget that.”

~***~

_Excerpt from Clan Smoke Jaguar Watch report, dated 6 May 3011:_

“… The Nova Cats continue to confuse our observers. On the one hand they are building up considerable space resources, trading with the Sea Foxes for craft and yard space for the construction of large jumpships and escort warships. In another Clan this might indicate an increase in pressure towards the Crusader faction, but the Khan and saKhans have publicly taken a strong shift towards the Warden line in the past year. There is also a great deal of emphasis placed on zellbrigen that was not in the Nova Cats in the past.

(…) With the information at hand the Watch does not believe that the Nova Cats have broken or will break zell, or are in any way dezgra that our agents are capable of determining. The sudden jump from Crusader to Warden is troubling, and the buildup of space assets requires further monitoring. This may be simply a move by the Nova Cats to capitalize on recent setbacks by their enemies, but should there be any treason hiding in the Nova Cats we must be ready to carve it out…”

~***~

>   
> _“Why can’t you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can’t just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can’t neglect it. You can’t cut it out but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad.”_ ~ T. H. White,  The Once and Future King(1958)

_Excerpt from “_ _Ill-Made Knights: The Madness of Clan Nova Cat_ ” _by Oathmaster Yori Fnord, CNC (Gondor Free University Press, Arda, 3075):_

“Alicia Doran’s history parallels that of her more famous counterpart among Clan infiltrators, Jamie Wolf. Like Wolf, Doran was a freeborn warrior in a society that prized the engineered trueborn. They both climbed the ranks of their toumans despite upper-caste prejudice, made it to the rank of Star Colonel and finally undertook mission that would prove pivotal in the history of their individual Clans and the Kerensky Cluster itself. Doran and Wolf were in many ways the perfect Clan line soldiers: tough, independent professional warriors. Their true accomplishment was that Jamie Wolf and Alicia Doran were very, very good at their jobs.

It’s an interesting irony that Alicia Doran and her Knights never achieved the same level of fame (or infamy) as Colonel Wolf and his Dragoons. This may be due to their very different goals. Wolf was tasked with surveying the Inner Sphere for potential invasion and then ultimately fortifying it against that same invasion. They fought very public battles deep within the Inner Sphere, against and alongside some of the best and brightest of the Successor State’s mechwarriors. Wolf’s Dragoons were news in a very big way.

By contrast, Doran’s Knights fought their battles on the fringes of the Inner Sphere, far from the centers of power and the top-rated HPGs capable of spreading word. They fought against the dregs of Inner Sphere society, pirates, thugs and fourth-rate state militaries to defend marginal worlds of farmers. In a very real way Alicia Doran improved the lives of people in the Inner Sphere and Periphery a hundred times more than anything Jamie Wolf ever managed, and yet few knew of the Knights outside of their operating theaters.

Colonel Doran was once confronted by this lack of recognition, and replied “A Knight is someone who holds back the darkness, not for fame or glory but because it has to be done, even if the people we’re protecting don’t know we exist. Even if they don’t know we _ever_ existed…”

_Yori Fnord is a native Fenspacer and gentlewoman adventurer who fell in with Clan Nova Cat during the Third Exodus and the Clan War, eventually attaining the rank of Oathmaster. In addition to her Clan duties she teaches space heroics and political science at Gondor Free University._

~***~

**Barcella, Kerensky Cluster**   
**8 November 3012**

In the ostentatiously pragmatic and utilitarian world of the Clans, it was only in the Great Halls where imagination and architecture were allowed to meet. In the heart of Clan Nova Cat’s capital stood their hall, an edifice of steel towers and soaring buttresses clad in blue-grey Barcella granite. At the ground floor long corridors with vaulted roofs twenty meters high led into the auditorium where the warrior caste would meet and vote with the Khan, Loremaster and Oathmaster. The auditorium and surrounding space were lit up with stained glass representations of the clan and their legacy, a reminder of the Clan’s past, present and future for all who came to see it.

Khan Abram, when not holding court on his throne in the auditorium, preferred a smaller office high in the Hall’s northern tower. It was smaller, easier to protect against eavesdropping and had an excellent view of the city. The Khan stood at the window watching the life of the city below and thinking of the future. He pretended to be engrossed in the view as the door opened and waited until the door closed and the person behind him stopped moving.

“Star Colonel Alicia, 77th Guards. My Khan requires me?” Alicia snapped off an unseen salute and held herself at full attention. The Khan turned. Alicia was a Clan warrior and looked every inch the part. Tall and athletic, her light blonde hair was cut in a severe style favored by Nova Cat mechwarriors, the shorter the hair the better the neurohelmet connection they said. Her posture straight and respectful, she carefully stared into the middle distance while Abram examined her.

“He does, Star Colonel.” The Khan’s voice was neutral, betraying nothing. “You have undergone the Rite of Vision, quiaff?”

“Aff, my Khan.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw the dream, my lord. The kites, the girl… the question.”

“And what was your answer?” Abram knew damn well what her answer was, she wouldn’t have been picked for the mission otherwise. Still, it was best to hear it from the quester’s own mouth at times like this, so there could be no doubt. And if they were to make this work there could be no doubt at all.

“I said yes, my lord.” Alicia said it without hesitation. “I am a knight of the Nova Cats.”

Abram nodded. “And that, Star Colonel Alicia,” he said, “is why you are here. I have a mission for you and your warriors, and it is a mission only those who have accepted the call may take.”

“I go where my king commands.”

“Indeed you will. You are to go into the Inner Sphere, Star Colonel,” Abram commanded. “Locate the hill of kites. When you find it, safeguard it against all comers, no matter who they are. Once the hill is secure, return to Barcella to report your success. In the meantime your knights are to protect all who need their aid. You will be our errants, paving the way for our return to duty.”

Alicia blinked at that but withheld further comment. Instead, she posed a different question. “What of the Wolf scouting party already in the Inner Sphere, my lord?”

“Avoid them,” he replied. “The Dragoons work for the Council and if you meet them, or they find you, they may report it to Strana Mechty. This does not concern the others. Not now, hopefully not ever. They do not need to know and we do not need to tell them.”

“If the other Clans learn of this-”

“If the others learn we have sent forces into the Inner Sphere… the Wardens will demand our heads for violating the Council’s edict, and the Crusaders will go along because we got there first. Star Colonel, to undertake this quest is to stand on the edge of abjuration and absorption, possibly annihilation like the Not-Named.” Abram shook his head. “But that is irrelevant. We may fall, but _we will not fail_.”

He drew himself up in kingly majesty. “Now, _Ser_ Alicia, knight of the Nova Cats, I charge you with this most holy of quests. Seek the hill of kites. Hold it until our Clan may come there, even if all the forces of all the Scavenger Lords stand against you. Show no fear in the face of your enemies. Be upright and just, so that the gods may love thee. Always speak the truth, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong. That is your oath; do you swear?”

Alicia looked straight into her Khan’s eyes. “I swear,” she said. “On my blood and honor, in the name of the Lady of the Hill I will fulfill the quest.”

Abram Radick deflated a little, losing some of the nobility in his bearing. “Then go,” he said. “Your dropship has been prepared for you. It is likely that we will never speak again, Star Colonel. I wish you good fortune… but I do not think you need it.”

~***~

_Excerpt from “_ _Ill-Made Knights: The Madness of Clan Nova Cat_ ” _by Oathmaster Yoriko Wildman, CNC (Gondor Free University Press, Arda, 3075):_

“…After her meeting with the Khan, Doran was bundled into a car and driven immediately to the capital’s spaceport on a nominally routine mission of force rotation through the Clan holdings on Circe. At this point, only the Star Colonel knew about the mission; she would deliver the necessary jump coordinates to her navigators personally when her dropship arrived at the nadir point. Likewise, Doran’s forces were hustled aboard their own dropships and told to make due speed for the nadir, where they would jump as soon as possible.

At Barcella’s nadir point lay three _Tramp_ -class jumpships, the _Caliburn_ , _Pridwen_ and _Rhongomiant_. These jumpships were some of the oldest in the Nova Cat touman, having carried out (under different names) part of Operation Klondike and even, according to crew legend, been at the liberation of Terra during the Civil War. The ships were picked because their age and general appearance matched Dragoon reports on the state of independent jumpships in the Inner Sphere and Periphery. The new names were a final gift from Khan Abram, a reminder of the mission and its goals.

Upon their departure from Barcella, Doran assembled her people and told them the truth behind the mission: they were to travel to the Inner Sphere and learn the truth behind the vision so many Nova Cats had experienced since 3009. Most of Doran’s warriors and many of the civilian castes aboard had had the vision, and even those who hadn’t had heard of it and how the dream managed to cut across all caste and birth lines. With no sign of an explanation within the Kerensky Cluster or the Pentagon, the Khan had decided to search the Inner Sphere, and Doran’s Knights, the cream of the 77th Guards, were the forces he sent under utmost secrecy.

It wasn’t until many years later, well after the Third Exodus and the Clan invasion began, that the Knights learned how secret their mission was. The navigators were ordered to use non-standard routes away from Clan space to avoid detection, which allowed the Nova Cats to claim Doran’s forces were ‘overdue, presumed lost’ in a misjump accident. The Knights were formally declared dead by the Clan in 3013. This gave the Khan perhaps the greatest plausible deniability dodge ever. Even if the Knights were found and reported to Strana Mechty, the Khan could claim the misjump stranded his warriors in the Inner Sphere and how was he to know otherwise? They might’ve been stranded on a planet full of talking birds for all he knew…

(…) The Knights spend the year long transit from Clan space wisely. Based off reports sent in by the Dragoons, they carefully aged their equipment during recharge periods and between stores replenishment. By the time the Knights arrived in the Inner Sphere their once-pristine mechs had acquired a layer of rust, grime and ‘battle damage’ that made them almost indistinguishable from any struggling mercenary company on the edges of civilization.

(…) After making landfall, Colonel Doran decided that, since her warriors would be operating in strict communications silence, it would be better to split the Knights up into three search groups, the better to probe the fringes of the Inner Sphere and find their quarry sooner. Doran took her Green Knights aboard the _Caliburn_ rimwards, to begin the search along the Canopian frontiers. Captain Giorgi Eaker stayed on the coreward and upspin fringe with the _Rhongomiant_ as the Blue Knights, and Captain Alexander Harris went off with the _Pridwen_ to search the downspin edge as the Grey Knights.

The Knight Companies established themselves as seemingly down-on-their-luck mercenaries of a sort familiar to the rougher parts of the Periphery. Most often they would sign up to protect ‘unimportant’ border worlds from pirates or minor raids from various Successor States. Despite the appearance of living constantly hand to mouth none of the Knights ever fell to outright piracy, always managing to make ‘a big windfall’ or ‘have an inheritance pay off’ just in time to stave off creditors. Occasionally a Knight lance would take a raiding job, usually in the company of another, more ruthless and less scrupulous mercenary division. On those occasions the Knights and their partners would go out and only the Knights came back. Sometimes they’d explain what happened, others they’d just refund expenses. None of their erstwhile ‘partners’ were ever seen again.

The Knights kept up appearances well enough to fool the Periphery warlords who hired them and ended up as their usual prey, but not quite enough to fool experienced Inner Sphere intelligence services. The spymasters noted that when the Green, Blue and Grey Knights arrived in an area, pirate raids dropped dramatically. They also noticed certain odd tactics used in their engagements similar to those used by Wolf’s Dragoons. Noticing this, they drew exactly the right wrong conclusion: the Knights were a splinter of the Dragoons, perhaps exiles like Cranston Snord, and as such retained some of their earlier training.

Wolfnet on the other hand was concerned and confused. Though the Knights and Dragoons never crossed paths directly – indeed Doran, Eaker and Harris took pains to be elsewhere if the Dragoons showed up – indirect reports of their fighting style tagged them as Clan. What perplexed Jamie Wolf and his intelligence people was the nature of their business in the Inner Sphere. They obviously weren’t a spearhead for invasion; instead of barreling directly towards Terra they stayed on the edges of the Periphery, never interfering or even doing basic recon. Instead they patrolled the outer rim almost as if they were looking for something in particular…”


End file.
